NEWS

In celebration of its 50th Anniversary, Epiphone has announced yet another beautiful reissue of the classic 1959 Les Paul Standard “burst” — this time in a strictly limited run of 1,959 instruments.

The guitar looks to be highly accurate to its nearly royal lineage, boasting a whole host of appointments you’d expect from a ’59 LP, including a solid mahogany neck with that fat ’50s “baseball bat” rounded neck profile, a deep-set long neck tenon (for increased sustain and better tone,) solid mahogany back, hard maple cap, and the whole thing topped with a premium-grade AAA flame maple veneer.

If you ask me though, the real goods are going to be in the electronics, with the ’59 Les Paul Standard sporting what is easily my favorite humbucker coming out of Gibson these days — the BurstBucker; a modern re-creation of the company’s highly sought-after PAF pickups. The guitar will be armed with a BurstBucker-2 (wound similar to a ’57 Classic) in the neck position, and BurstBucker-3 (over-wound and hotter) at the bridge.

Other stand-out specs will include a set of Mallory-150 tone capacitors, a Switchcraft brand 3-way pickup switch, amber top-hat knobs w/metal pointers, Epiphone’s LockTone tune-o-matic stopbar bridge and tailpiece, a blank trussrod cover, and the guitar’s serial number stamped into the headstock back.

The Epiphone Limited Edition ’59 Les Paul Standard will ship with a Lifton-style replica hard shell case (brown exterior, pink interior,) and the instrument will be available in your choice of Faded Cherryburst or Faded Iced Tea finishes. Street price is expected to run around $900.